September 21 – December 1, 2019

259 Lake Shore Blvd East

Caecilia Tripp, Interstellar Sleep, 2019, expanded sculpture, film, performance & soundscape. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. On view at 259 Lake Shore Blvd E as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid. Courtesy Toronto Biennial of Art.
Caecilia Tripp, Interstellar Sleep, 2019, expanded sculpture, film, performance & soundscape. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. On view at 259 Lake Shore Blvd E as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid. Courtesy Toronto Biennial of Art.
Caecilia Tripp, Interstellar Sleep, 2019, expanded sculpture, film, performance & soundscape. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. On view at 259 Lake Shore Blvd E as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid. Courtesy Toronto Biennial of Art.

Interstellar Sleep is an immersive installation produced in collaboration with astrophysicists from York University Observatory, cosmologist Dr. Renée Hložek, and composer Mani Mazinani. It is comprised of a celestial filmscape, a surround soundscape, and a series of performances taking place during the opening week of the Biennial. Through the choreographed interplay of these multivalent forms, Tripp explores Martinician thinker Edouard Glissant’s notion of pensée du tremblement (trembling or moving thought), which gestures to a poetics of unrooted and rhizomatic relations.

Soundscape: Mani Mazinani, with vocals by Zakisha Brown; Director of Photography: Andrei Pora; Camera Assistant: Marteen Sevier; Cosmologist: Dr. Renée Hlozek; Costume Design: Renaissance / Social Anti; Performers: Zakisha Brown, Borelson, Julia Passero, Alyssa Passero, Justin Mendicino, Rowen McBride.

Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art.

Going Space and Other Worlding, a related exhibition of Tripp’s work, is currently on view at AGYU and curated by Emelie Chhangur. For more information, please visit agyu.art.

Bio

Caecilia Tripp

Caecilia Tripp (based in New York City, USA and Paris, France) is a conceptual artist whose primary mediums are film installation, soundscapes, sculpture and performance. Inspired by Glissant’s Poetics of Relation, her work shines a light on forms of freedom, utopia and civil disobedience at the crossroads of our worldliness, climate change and the cosmic spheres where her collaborative pieces seek to transcend social imaginaries and fixed identities. Her work has been shown internationally in museum venues and galleries, including numerous film festivals.

Exhibition Site

259 Lake Shore Blvd East

The life of this nondescript building reveals the area’s economic history. Its first tenant in 1945, the Standard Chemical Company, produced methanol, formaldehyde, and charcoal. A railway line to the south tethered the site to the movement of goods. By 1954, the building was divided into a warehouse and a showroom, a configuration that remained intact over the course of various leaseholders, including oil and electrical supply companies and a series of car dealerships. (The advertising of its most recent tenant, Volvo, is still visible on the façade.) This building’s fate is indeterminate, as real estate development is increasingly filling the voids left by industrial decline.

259 Lake Shore Blvd East
Toronto ON
M5A 3T7